The Senate voted 51-47 today to defeat S. 2204, the Close Big Oil Loopholes Act sponsored by Senator Menendez of New Jersey. The bill would have closed five major loopholes enjoyed by the five largest oil companies including BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Royal Dutch Shell. All told, the bill would have saved taxpayers $24 billion over ten years divided roughly half between deficit reduction and clean energy programs.
The rosy picture from the natural gas industry: A nearly endless supply of energy, jobs, security, and economic growth. Diving in to the projections provided to us by drilling proponents requires a critical look at their underlying assumptions. Economists and other experts studying how much we have, how much its worth, how many jobs created, and how much economic growth generated use complicated algorithms to provide numbers for each of these values.
This is the second submission of "In Their Own Words"; a series of recordings from a much ballyhooed industry PR conference in Houston where Texas Sharon recorded industry talking about transparency. Despite their constant use of the word "transparent"; these recordings will show an industry that is anything but
In this second post, we hear Anadarko Petroleum discuss/dismiss the use of fracking polyacrylamides.
Salmon consumers everywhere will be happy today! The Food Marketing Institute (FMI), which represents a whopping 26,000 retail food stores, and $680 billion in annual revenue, has spoken out on behalf of protecting Alaska's Bristol Bay fishery - the world's largest wild sockeye salmon fishery.
In a recent letter to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), FMI expressed its support for the study currently underway to determine the suitability of large-scale development in Bristol Bay, including the proposed Pebble Mine.
It makes sense. The Bristol Bay salmon fishery is an important part of our nation's food supplies.
So hats off to FMI and its 1500 members for its support for sustainable fisheries. The EPA study is expected in late April 2012. So, stay tuned. This important scientific assessment will help determine future actions to protect Bristol Bay.
And, go enjoy some Bristol Bay wild salmon.
The stage is thus set for how Maryland will respond to the political winds of the shale gale. According to a new study sponsored by Maryland’s chapter of the American Petroleum Institute (API), Maryland could drill several hundred wells, mostly in Garrett County right next to West Virginia and Pennsylvania. At a recent API conference in Annapolis, experts estimated Maryland’s drilling capacity somewhere between 1600 and 2000 wells. While this seems like a relatively small number, two points bear impressing. First, almost all of those wells will be in just one or two counties. So, they’d still be sited pretty close together.
Second, and almost more importantly, is the opportunity for Maryland to shape the rules of the road for the fracking industry. In light of the President’s State of the Union embrace of natural gas, and Pennsylvania’s cart blanche acquiescence to the drilling industry wish list, Maryland must set a proper example for the entire Marcellus play. In fact, the Mason-Dixon line must become a firewall separating the right way to harness our energy resources from the example set by irresponsible oil and gas development elsewhere.